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Hotmail in the trenches… sort of.

So for whatever reason you forget to log into your hotmail account for a month or so. When you finally get around to it, you're told that your account has been suspended for inactivity. If you're dormant too long, you may come back and find that all of your email has been wiped - just a blip on the electron radar, never to be seen again. But hey, it's Hotmail, and you're not paying for the service, nor does Hotmail even know who you really are. What happens if your name is Zacarias Moussaoui, you're being held in a prison for conspiring to commit a terrorist act against the United States, and you claim that the data to clear your name is stored in your Hotmail account? But the feds want to get geeky on you, and they waste precious time and now all traces of your virtual existance have been erased. Or so the story goes.

"Moussaoui has demanded copies of emails he sent from various locations before his arrest. He was picked up in August 2001 on immigration charges after arousing suspicion while taking the flying lessons. Judge Brinkema said in court that, given the intense law enforcement attention focused on Moussaoui after 11 September, she did not understand why an immediate and thorough investigation into the defendant's email and computer activities did not lead investigators to the Hotmail account, if it existed."

Whether or not you buy Moussaoui's story, there are some interesting archival and data issues here. Just how long is long enough? Should all data be kept for seven years, akin to the IRS? In theory it may sound like a wonderful idea, but in practicality, it would flop like a pancake. If you consider the size and growth of data over time, archiving over an extended period of time could become costly, and you can bet that consumer protection advocates might have a problem with entities like Hotmail keeping your correspondance archived for a decade or more. Perhaps seven years is overkill, but what is appropriate?